I work at a software company doing tech support for specialized software used by county mental health clinics to do their client and accounting tracking.

We have a client call us, asking for help installing MS Word. I explained that we didn’t support it, that they didn’t pay us to support it, and that she should call a PC support company.

She whined that she didn’t know any, and we should do it. We ended up sending one of our programmers, at $90 an hour (in 1992) to feed 30 diskettes into ONE machine whenever it asked for one.

I work in a medical office where we have a crack down on cell phone usage, as it is pretty out of hand. This coincided with the release of Pokémon Go. A couple of coworkers and I play, as does the supervisor.

Five pm hits, which marks the end of my shift. I pull my phone out of my purse and turn on the app, and an [Uncommon Pokémon] spawns in.

I catch it and brag to my coworker who feigns annoyance at me. I walk up to my boss’s office to let her know I’m leaving and to update her on the day’s tasks, ending with “oh, and there is an [Uncommon Pokémon] by my station.”

Without skipping a beat she picks up her phone and goes to find it.

(I work in a gaming centre in the Middle East. Each of our customers has a username and a password. One day a customer comes in and sits in front of a computer and, after about five seconds, he calls me in a very urgent tone.)

Customer: “[My Name]!”

Me: “Yes, sir, do you have any problems?”

Customer: “I can’t login. I am not able to type my password. Your keyboard is broken. Change it.”

(I type some alphabets in the password field and it seems to work fine.)

Customer: “My password is a number. I am not able to type numbers. Your keyboard is broken. Change it.”

(I type the numbers that are above the alphabets in the keyboard and again it works fine.)

Customer: *points to the number pad in the keyboard* “I am not able to type numbers from here. Your keyboard is broken. Change it.”

(I notice the number lock is off. I switch it on and start typing using the number pad.)

Customer: *blank stare*

(I work for a small company as the network administrator. Being a small company our IT department consists of me and my manager, supporting approximately 100 users at four sites across the US. A user’s hard drive had just crashed and I installed a new drive and OS, essentially creating a “new” PC. Now the user is trying to work from home the following day and connect to our VPN.)

User: “I’m having trouble connecting to the VPN. It’s asking for my username and password.”

Me: “Okay, it’s the same user password combo that you use to log in at the office.”

User: “I know that! It’s not working.”

Me: “That’s weird; the VPN client should be giving you an error message. What’s the message?”

User: “It says that I have to select a local connection. What does that mean?”

Me: “Are you connected to the Internet?”

User: “Yes, of course!”

Me: “Okay, try opening the browser and connecting to [Website].”

User: “It’s not working. This computer used to just connect to the Internet.”

Me: “Right, but since I just re-installed the OS, you’re going to have to join it to your home network again. It’s no big deal. Just connect to your wireless connection and put in your wifi password.”

User: “I don’t know it.”

Me: “Okay, all is not lost. Do you have an Ethernet cable? You can just hardwire it to your router.”

User: “What’s an Ethernet cable?”

(I ended up driving out to the user’s house and giving them a cable.)

(I am a 23-year-old grad student, figuring out living alone. I have chronic bronchitis; after this last flare up, I have been very ill for the past few days, and am on about six different medications. I am very loopy and tired, but I need groceries, so I run out to the great big mart of walls. I wander and get groceries, only to realize when I get up front that I have lost my phone. I check my car, then the store, then finally return to the customer service desk.)

Me: “Has anyone turned in an iPhone? It’s a 5c, blue—”

Cashier: *eyes me* “What kind of phone?”

Me: “It’s a blue iPhone 5c. It’s in a pink case with a dreamcatcher on the back.” *cashier pulls it from her drawer* “Yes! Oh, yes, that’s it!”

Cashier: “That man turned it in just now.” *points me to an older man, about 75 or so*

(I rush to him, thanking him profusely and offering a reward.)

Elderly Man: *in a gentle voice* “It’s not needed, miss.” *after I explain I use it for school* “Do you have a computer at home? Make sure you back it up every so often – it’s important you have your schoolwork, and you wouldn’t want to lose it.”

(To that sweet old gentleman, thank you for helping a very sick student get back her phone. It’s all I have to contact family, and was the only way to order my medication from out of state if I needed to. And thank you for the reminder with my backups!)